The Great Wild Goose Pagoda was built by Tang (644-914 AD) Emperor TaiZong in his huge imperial capital Chang'An - present day Xi'an - as a monastery where Buddhist scriptures brought back from India could be translated from Sanskrit. As a result of the meeting of these two cultural forces - Buddhist thought and the globally dominant Chinese empire - both Buddhism and China changed permanently. In these current days of a globalized economy, we might ask how far we can progess without a more globalized culture, open like Tang TaiZong, to outside cultural influences.